“The bus is here” I turned back and yelled to Erin and Kellen, who were in a store deciding if they wanted to get ice cream. “ok” they reply. And we board the bus. It’s a nice bus, like many of the public transit buses here in Ecuador; like our coach buses. The three of us walk on with a handful of other people and street vendors who are selling various meats on a stick. Unfortunately, Loretto is a larger town and the bus is packed; standing room only! Erin and Kellen begin to think we should have waited to get ice cream. As the bus begins to go, we hear a familiar voice. Could it really be? Why yes it is: Jim and Evan. Jim is our translator and Evan is our host in Huaticocha. They had gone on their own excursion to visit some tribal like communities early in the morning and some how we managed to end up on the same bus going back to the house.
We begin to approach the main bridge, just 5 minutes down the road when the bus comes to a complete stop. I glance out the window to see the police standing at the bus door. “Oh crap. I hope ya’ll have your passports” I nervously say to Erin and Kellen. They both shake their heads no. Everyone is told to get off the bus with our bags. Then they split the men and women into two separate lines. We are supposed to present our identification and those not from the country/area need to state their business for being in the area. The police then check your personal bags and bags under the bus. I stand there watching the police check all the identifications and pat down the men.
The three of us begin to wonder what would happen if we just slowly walked away. Then up comes the police man. He was old, grumpy and hard as anything to understand. I show him my passport and he starts asking me questions that I can’t answer. Jim, our translator, asks the officer if he can help out. The officer then asks for his identification again. Mr. police man questions my bottle of advil, I really wanted to give him one because he looked like he was having a rough day 🙂 Eventually he cleared my bag. My two team mates, however, did not have their passports. A younger police man cleared Kellen and warned him to have it on him next time. This older police man, unfortunately, was not as nice and he told us that Erin was going to stay at the police station until we brought her identification back to clear her.
As we begin to ask if I could stay with her while she is detained the old grumpy man walks away from us, towards the younger police man. Somehow this younger police man convinced the old grumpy police man to not detain Erin! Praise the Lord!
We quickly boarded the bus before the old grumpy man changed his mind. We wonder…..should we have stopped for ice cream after all? We will never know 😉
